Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum didn't pull any punches earlier today. In fact, he made it his business to explicitly explain that HBO's decision to counter program Top Rank's ESPN show this week is very unwise. Speaking of HBO's boxing chief, Peter Nelson, Arum used a Yiddish insult: "The putz that is directing the sports at HBO is operating in his own universe. He's against us! He's against us because we used to be with him, so he does everything in his power to try and hurt us, which he really can't do. All he's hurting is his own company when he counter programs us. Why? That's stupid. We're not in the same business. We're over the air and we sell commercials and so forth, he's supposed to be providing a service for his subscribers.

Arum continued:

"Why counter program? If you feel you've got the bigger attraction then fine, but you can't counter program with garbage. We have a historic fight that everybody is talking about [Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Guillermo Rigondeaux], two gold medals for each of them, so on and so forth, and they're coming with a bunch of Spanish schmegeggies [Orlando Salido vs. Miguel Roman] in Las Vegas where they won't sell a ticket. Why counter program? They could have saved the money instead of pissing it away.

"They'll say well Salido isn't a bad fighter and he isn't a bad fighter, but what they should have done was take Salido and pair it with the Billy Joe Saunders vs. David Lemieux fight on December 16th. Instead they take Lemieux and Saunders and put garbage with it and all they're going to do is hurt their own ratings on December 16th. The problem is the guy who is running sports at HBO right now is totally incompetent and has no experience, none. If and when that merger takes place I think the first thing AT&T will do is take that sports department and give it to Turner and let Turner schedule fights on HBO. We don't want HBO to go out of boxing, we need them in boxing, but they can't keep counter programming us with these cockamamie fights that nobody cares about."

"Hopefully, the adults, and I still believe that there are adults at HBO, will step in and take control of their network."